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IMO, it is the fact that our bigs are not boxing out their men, but are "going after the ball" when rebounding that is the primary cause of our issues. Last postseason, with Kendrick Perkins as the ONLY good defensive rebounding big that we had, we finished second, out of the 16 playoff teams, in defensive rebounding percentage, grabbing 77.8% of all rebounds on our glass. This season, with KG back, and with Sheed added to the mix, we are averaging only 73.1% in DRB%. That is "good" for 16th in the league.

Why do I mention this with regards to boxing out? Well, in the playoffs, because off our lack of bigs, we really only had a 3 man rotation, and two of them were our worst defensive rebounding bigs (Scal and Big Baby), at least when it came to numbers. What they were not bad at, though, was boxing their man out. The main beneficiary of this was Rondo, who cleaned the glass off, with those two holding their men away from the ball. The lack of size that we had made it absolutely imperative that we do things the right way.

That leads me to what is going on now. Our bigs are not taking care of their man, and sometimes are even fighting each other for the ball. The key attitude when you box out is that 1. The guy I am boxing out isn't getting this board and then 2. I will get it if I can... and in that order. First make sure that the guy you have a body on is out of the play. If grabbing the rebound means surrendering a %)-%) coin flip to that guy, then you hope that one of your teammates gets it.

That being the case, I think that Doc needs to get in the ears of our bigs and remind them that rebounding is a TEAM responsibility and a TEAM effort. The rebounds are not THEIRS. If they are grabbing 10 boards, but letting their man get 7 offensive rebounds, then they are MASSIVELY failing at their job. Let Rondo, Paul or Ray get the ones that they can't get to, but make sure that their man isn't just waltzing in there to either grab it or tap it back out to the perimeter.

Knees bent, ass out, and push the bastard back out of there. That will fix that stuff tout suite.

Yeah. This sounds like a Tommy rant. While boxing out is important - so its having the hops to grab the boards. With KGs knee injury his rebounding is down. Back in our championship days he averaged nearly 10 boards - now he is around 7. That and the fact that Rasheed doesn't really get off the ground either kind hurts our boards. Pierce isn't the rebounder he was in his youth either..

Either way we are boarding enough to win a ton of games - so I am not that worried. KG's knee is coming around so he will be able to board better.

Pete

The only two who are blocking out right now are Williams and Perkins. Rasheed and KG don't have the hops and they won't get it back either so that leaves perkins to over compensate while they are in the game.
But in a sense you and Pete are both rite we are rebounding enough to get wins and were not blocking out enough.

Rebounding is ultimately about the desire, willingness and hunger for the ball, and boxing out plays it's role in that. Generally if you don't box out well as a team, you'll allow more rebounds then you should. I think that is part of our problem, but not all of it.

Some of our players have gotten a little too lazy/complacent, some have gotten older/slower, others weren't above average rebounders to begin with, and both first and second unit bigs are not as capable of rebounding the basketball as they were the last two years (post KG/Leon injuries aside) . Our bigs right now are not as agile/mobile as we have seen in the past few years. Even if you look back to the Baby/Leon combo off the bench, what they gave up in size they made up for in intensity and willingness to get after it, plus they both have what I refer to as sticky hands. Seemingly if they could get a fingertip on the ball, they could secure it (Leon more so than Baby). Rondo's got it as well. I don't think anyone else on our roster who can be considered a rebounding threat has the hands of those three, not Shelden, Perk or even KG. I don't recall the two of them playing together and not coming up with the Lion's share of loose balls. Since Leon is gone and Baby hasn't played a second yet, that accounts for a small part of what ails us as well. Rasheed can still play post D effectively but is a poor rebounder for a 7 footer at this stage of his career. Shelden rebounds well but at 14 mpg, he's not on the floor long enough to have a major impact.

While KG is definitely getting his legs back on offense, his days of being a dominant rebounder are behind him. Still, I expect his rebounding to improve over the next few months. He has been looking better, but I don't think he's that close to 100% yet. He hasn't been ready physically to bang in the paint, and he doesn't have the sustained lift that he had preinjury. So while he's never going to be a dominant glass cleaner again, we should still expect improvement. Much like our defense, he is key to our rebounding efforts as a team. If we can't count on him to steady our ability to rebound as a team, than who can we look to?

Perk does the dirty work and blocks out well, but he doesn't have the best hands nor is he the quickest/highest leaper. IMO Perk shouldn't be the #1 rebounder on a team when his most important asset on the boards is clearing space. He's the only guy we can really consider an offensive rebounding threat on the team, even though he's never been a big time offensive rebounding threat to begin with. You don't tend to get too many offensive boards as a team anyway when you're hitting the glass 1 on 4. But I'm not even concerned with offensive boards, if we can shoot around 50% as a team I''ll take the tradeoff. It's the defensive rebounding that concerns me.

Just about every individual players rebounding numbers are either down from years past or around career lows, so you can't specifically narrow it down to any one player, although I place emphasis on the bigs job to control the paint. They've been playing better team defense in the last 2 games but I'm not sure they have the energy as a team to get after it 100% on D, rebounding, transition and offense for 48 minutes straight any more. It looks like they're all trying to figure out how to pick their spots collectively. I would be surprised if they don't show some improvement with rebounding as the season progresses. It is clearly a weakness and I'm sure the coaching staff and team isn't oblivious to that fact. There's always going to be an achille's heel with a team, no matter how good they are. Last year, it was turnovers. This year it appears to be rebounding.

I will say, however, that we are not rebounding enough to get wins. We are doing everything besides rebounding to get wins. I'll take the wins any way we can get them but the rebounding woes are concerning to me, particularly if they aren't alleviated as the season moves forward. This team is a work in progress with a lot to be optimistic about. I thought it was an interesting comment during the broadcast last night that Doc was quoted as saying how nothing gets these guys fired up anymore. Maybe they are just biding their time til the playoffs.

Still, one look at our record puts everything in perspective.

Nice post, green dreamer. Scal seems to have forgotten to box out as well. Bonner had a field day against him.

I don't think boxing out has been that big of a problem. For the most part our bigs have been boxing out pretty well. The bigger problem as I see it is that our bigmen aren't going up for the rebounds, they're just standing on the ground waiting for the ball to fall into their hands. This is allowing opponents to come over the top and tip the ball away, something that has been happening way too much lately (Bonner must've done that at least four times during the Spurs game). This may work itself out a little as KG gains more confidence in his knee.

Bottom line, our bigs start rebounding with more aggression.